If I had a dollar for every time the Nvidia driver screwed me over I still couldn’t order anything with it because my graphics driver wouldn’t load.

  • jqubed@lemmy.world
    9·
    2 days ago

    What’s the deal with Linux and Nvidia? Do the official drivers suck, or is it people not wanting to use a closed source driver but not having good open source drivers? I might have access to a good gaming PC soon but it has an Nvidia card.

    • DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml
      1·
      4 hours ago

      I have never had to do anything more than sudo apt install nvidia-driver, even with wacky setups such as:

      • Nvidia GPU connected with an ExpressCard eGPU dock to a ThinkPad with integrated Intel graphics
      • two Nvidia GPUs, an AMD GPU and an Intel GPU all in the same system

      EDIT: debian btw

    • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
      17·
      2 days ago

      The current official Nvidia driver is known to cause problems during install, during system updates or basically whenever it feels like it (when using Wayland, after hibernation, on rainy days…). Even the most well maintained distros regularly struggle with it, ran into trouble on both Mint and OpenSuse myself in the past.

      If you don’t have your distro already I’d suggest trying one that comes with the Nvidia driver preinstalled (they then also usually take care of all the small adjustments). Saves you some headache.

      Those I can currently think off that ship the proprietary driver (in no particular order): ZorinOS, Pop!_OS, Nobara, Bazzite, EndeavourOS, TuxedoOS, SlimbookOS

    • dev_null@lemmy.ml
      3·
      1 day ago

      I use Nvidia on Linux for over a decade now, never had a problem. Using the official closed source drivers. I don’t know if AMD is better because I never tried it myself, but in my experience Nvidia is working as well as on Windows.

      This is on desktop, I don’t know about laptops. My experience is also limited to gaming, maybe it’s bad for CUDA or something.

    • dan@upvote.au
      6·
      2 days ago

      The drivers have gotten a lot better over the last few years, and Nvidia even have an official open-source driver now, but there’s still issues with them. Wayland works very well now, but not perfectly (especially on GPUs with low VRAM).

      If you’re on Linux and are buying a new GPU, stick to AMD. Their driver is part of the Linux kernel, it’s more stable, and it gets all the newest features first.